I personally love Shyamalan's films including this one as he has a unique style and means of creating his characters (they always have a sense of innocence about them that makes them endearing, to me anyways). The thematic material I also always find very thoughtful and relevant and I love his use of spirituality. I can understand why not everyone else shares this enjoyment however.

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I agree with you. I respect him, no matter what, for his refusal to play the Hollywierd/box office game. he makes his movies for himself. if we like them, fine. if not, fine as well.

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That's not good enough because his financial backing and studio distrubution has to come from somewhere. Even writer, director & producer Woody Allen knows that much.

I hated Signs which I thought I would have liked, and enjoyed Lady in the Water, though I am not a fan of the supernatural genre in general. So far only Shyamalan's first 2 movies are in the excellent category. The Happening continually contradicted itself, and it wasn't great by any stretch, but I could sense what he was trying to do and it didn't quite work.

I personally love Shyamalan's films including this one as he has a unique style and means of creating his characters (they always have a sense of innocence about them that makes them endearing, to me anyways). The thematic material I also always find very thoughtful and relevant and I love his use of spirituality. I can understand why not everyone else shares this enjoyment however.

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I agree with you. I respect him, no matter what, for his refusal to play the Hollywierd/box office game. he makes his movies for himself. if we like them, fine. if not, fine as well.

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That's not good enough because his financial backing and studio distrubution has to come from somewhere. Even writer, director & producer Woody Allen knows that much.

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I could see him doing indie stuff if Hollywierd dries up.

I still think he needs to "outsource" his scriptwriting and just direct. he's a much better director than a writer.

The Sixth Sense: Solid, good movie. I was surprised by the ending.
Unbreakable: I liked it, but I really loved the ending.

Signs: Scared the heck out of me. I really enjoy this movie. I like movies where seemingly normal people in a seemingly normal location experience abnormal and paranormal events. I liked the approach to this movie as well and the atmosphere it created. Watched it at Midnight one night, with all of the lights off in the house. I highly recommend it watched this way.

The Village: I liked it. The ending was different and I thought it was a nice little twist, but nothing with *shock* *gasp* revelations. Still, I did enjoy it and loved the atmosphere in this movie, too. I didn't like how it stretched reality, though. You see, Signs made reality a bit quirky, but The Village had to forego it at one point. A movie that was supposed to be based in reality and extend in the imagination failed to do so. Still, an overall enjoyable movie.

Lady in the Water: Oh, this was a bad movie. I did not enjoy this movie at all.

I really don't get all the hate. My grade is reflective enough that I can understand some criticisms of the film...some. However as far as there being a clear narrative to follow, for an M.Night film, it was an easily viewable movie. Especially in the 1.5hr time span.

I'd hardly call the performances wooden or dull. I'd say they were instructed to act stoic, confused and distant.

The population was confused about this event, the phenomenon, that was occuring with no explanation. Elliot and Alma clearly were distant cause of the fight(s) they had been having, hence the uneasiness about them on top of the situation unfolding about them. Add on confusion as to what to do, where to go and who is trustworthy and you get the performances the movie displays. Outside of anger, which some passerbys display, does no one else recall how you felt on 9/11? Who is doing this? Why are they doing this? Is my city safe? Are my loved ones safe? That is what I see as what M.Night was going for in his direction of Mark, Zooey and the cast.

The movie is clearly an eco-friendly message. Or rather wants the viewer to think about his/her environment and what impact man is having. If the viewer is also knowledgable enough to know that nature does indeed right itself from time to time it makes the events seem even more scary. Nature will over time make a Nuclear zone safe. It will in an instant erupt a volcano that changes the local ecology for decades. It will ignite fires with lightning clearing out brush while the fallout produces richer soil for new growth. A tsunami, tornado or hurricane will likewise scour the land like a wire brush.

So while it may seem far fetched and "sci-fi"ish that plants might release a chemical to neutralize man as the threat...why not? The only real big stretch is that the fauna is semi-sentient and able to coordinate an attack. M.Night keeps with the sudden start, sudden stop aspect of the other events listed above by keeping the event to a 24hr span.

I liked the movie better than The Village and it ranks just above Lady in the Water for me.

My M.Night ranking

Sixth Sense

Signs

Unbreakable

The Happening

Lady in the Water

The Village

It made money at the box office and his career isn't dead. I've never been able to say any of his movies truly sucked. Not when so much real crap out there exists.

I really don't get all the hate. My grade is reflective enough that I can understand some criticisms of the film...some. However as far as there being a clear narrative to follow, for an M.Night film, it was an easily viewable movie. Especially in the 1.5hr time span.

I'd hardly call the performances wooden or dull. I'd say they were instructed to act stoic, confused and distant.

The population was confused about this event, the phenomenon, that was occuring with no explanation. Elliot and Alma clearly were distant cause of the fight(s) they had been having, hence the uneasiness about them on top of the situation unfolding about them. Add on confusion as to what to do, where to go and who is trustworthy and you get the performances the movie displays. Outside of anger, which some passerbys display, does no one else recall how you felt on 9/11? Who is doing this? Why are they doing this? Is my city safe? Are my loved ones safe? That is what I see as what M.Night was going for in his direction of Mark, Zooey and the cast.

The movie is clearly an eco-friendly message. Or rather wants the viewer to think about his/her environment and what impact man is having. If the viewer is also knowledgable enough to know that nature does indeed right itself from time to time it makes the events seem even more scary. Nature will over time make a Nuclear zone safe. It will in an instant erupt a volcano that changes the local ecology for decades. It will ignite fires with lightning clearing out brush while the fallout produces richer soil for new growth. A tsunami, tornado or hurricane will likewise scour the land like a wire brush.

So while it may seem far fetched and "sci-fi"ish that plants might release a chemical to neutralize man as the threat...why not? The only real big stretch is that the fauna is semi-sentient and able to coordinate an attack. M.Night keeps with the sudden start, sudden stop aspect of the other events listed above by keeping the event to a 24hr span.

I liked the movie better than The Village and it ranks just above Lady in the Water for me.

My M.Night ranking

Sixth Sense

Signs

Unbreakable

The Happening

Lady in the Water

The Village

It made money at the box office and his career isn't dead. I've never been able to say any of his movies truly sucked. Not when so much real crap out there exists.

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At the start Mark Walberg says: "We can speculate why certain events happen but in the end we may never know."

So along with that statement and no reasoning at the end, we aren't even sure if it was an eco-friendly message. All anyone in the film was doing was speculating, we don't know why it all happened or exactly what caused it.

Even after they speculated it might be the plants, why lead the entire group through an open field of green grass & trees? Even with all the events in nature you mentioned, none of them just happen for no reason or simply dissapate in thin air after it's done.

At the start Mark Walberg says: "We can speculate why certain events happen but in the end we may never know."

So along with that statement and no reasoning at the end, we aren't even sure if it was an eco-friendly message. All anyone in the film was doing was speculating, we don't know why it all happened or exactly what caused it.

Even after they speculated it might be the plants, why lead the entire group through an open field of green grass & trees? Even with all the events in nature you mentioned, none of them just happen for no reason or simply dissapate in thin air after it's done.

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We as a species speculate on a great number of things.
Is global warming, this cycle(some say we've cooled but I digress), being impacted by man? Is the ozone hole really an issue or does it fluctuate naturally? Were the plants the villains or something else?

Speculation and a cavalcade of voices makes many think man is having an adverse impact on the planets climate. As a society we banned certain chemicals cause some science heads speculated they might be causing holes in the ozone. Elliot(Whalberg) and the talking heads on TV speculated plants might be the bad guy so that is the narrative path M.Night took us on.

What if for all our self percieved intelligence there are just things we can't grasp? What if Global Warming/Cooling and the Ozone are beyond our full understanding? Likewise we created a boogeyman out of nature in The Happening cause it was our perceptions that said, nature was the dominant constant. Parks. Fields.

As a species our great minds said the solar system revolved around the planet Earth. That the Earth was flat. That you could sail from Spain and end up in India without hitting land. There aren't any measurable units smaller than an atom. We could go on and on.

"...in the end we may never know", to use your Elliot statement, what M.Night is truly trying to convey. Eco-friendly or Eco-indifferent. Maybe its not even entirely an eco message at all. Maybe its something else entirely.
That is part of what I like about this and Lady in the Water. The viewer can take different messages from it and some viewers may not take away the same things. I don't like vagueness in all my movies but its why I enjoy M.Nights movies as a break from the cut and dry straight forwardness of nearly all other movies.

Some people are just not wired to enjoy this type of storytelling and hence the backlash I think.

At the start Mark Walberg says: "We can speculate why certain events happen but in the end we may never know."

So along with that statement and no reasoning at the end, we aren't even sure if it was an eco-friendly message. All anyone in the film was doing was speculating, we don't know why it all happened or exactly what caused it.

Even after they speculated it might be the plants, why lead the entire group through an open field of green grass & trees? Even with all the events in nature you mentioned, none of them just happen for no reason or simply dissapate in thin air after it's done.

Click to expand...

We as a species speculate on a great number of things.
Is global warming, this cycle(some say we've cooled but I digress), being impacted by man? Is the ozone hole really an issue or does it fluctuate naturally? Were the plants the villains or something else?

Speculation and a cavalcade of voices makes many think man is having an adverse impact on the planets climate. As a society we banned certain chemicals cause some science heads speculated they might be causing holes in the ozone. Elliot(Whalberg) and the talking heads on TV speculated plants might be the bad guy so that is the narrative path M.Night took us on.

What if for all our self percieved intelligence there are just things we can't grasp? What if Global Warming/Cooling and the Ozone are beyond our full understanding? Likewise we created a boogeyman out of nature in The Happening cause it was our perceptions that said, nature was the dominant constant. Parks. Fields.

As a species our great minds said the solar system revolved around the planet Earth. That the Earth was flat. That you could sail from Spain and end up in India without hitting land. There aren't any measurable units smaller than an atom. We could go on and on.

"...in the end we may never know", to use your Elliot statement, what M.Night is truly trying to convey. Eco-friendly or Eco-indifferent. Maybe its not even entirely an eco message at all. Maybe its something else entirely.
That is part of what I like about this and Lady in the Water. The viewer can take different messages from it and some viewers may not take away the same things. I don't like vagueness in all my movies but its why I enjoy M.Nights movies as a break from the cut and dry straight forwardness of nearly all other movies.

Some people are just not wired to enjoy this type of storytelling and hence the backlash I think.

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Yes, I think you're last sentence captures it all.

If people are going to pay $10 and over for a film, I think they in some way deserve to know the hows and whys of what they're watching or else they just paid a good amount of money for nothing. Which is what I feel is the type of story the Happening told us.

Why go out of his way to make such a violent & bloody story full of neurotic characters only to pull the rug out from under us at the end?

I was a firm supporter of M.Night thru all his other films dispite what others said. As a fan, this film left me feeling betrayed. I'm glad you can but there is no rational way for me to defend this film or even support it. Even his usual inspirational theme that ran thru "Sixth Sense", "Unbreakable", "Signs", The Village" & "LITW" of believing in yourself to create a better future was missing. The two main characters didn't give a damn about anyone but themselves.

As M. Night told us in "Lady..":"Mankind has forgotten how to listen." I think M.Night has forgotten how to listen to the audience he's trying to reach as well.

That is part of what I like about this and Lady in the Water. The viewer can take different messages from it and some viewers may not take away the same things. I don't like vagueness in all my movies but its why I enjoy M.Nights movies as a break from the cut and dry straight forwardness of nearly all other movies.

Some people are just not wired to enjoy this type of storytelling and hence the backlash I think.

At the start Mark Walberg says: "We can speculate why certain events happen but in the end we may never know."

So along with that statement and no reasoning at the end, we aren't even sure if it was an eco-friendly message. All anyone in the film was doing was speculating, we don't know why it all happened or exactly what caused it.

Even after they speculated it might be the plants, why lead the entire group through an open field of green grass & trees? Even with all the events in nature you mentioned, none of them just happen for no reason or simply dissapate in thin air after it's done.

Click to expand...

We as a species speculate on a great number of things.
Is global warming, this cycle(some say we've cooled but I digress), being impacted by man? Is the ozone hole really an issue or does it fluctuate naturally? Were the plants the villains or something else?

Speculation and a cavalcade of voices makes many think man is having an adverse impact on the planets climate. As a society we banned certain chemicals cause some science heads speculated they might be causing holes in the ozone. Elliot(Whalberg) and the talking heads on TV speculated plants might be the bad guy so that is the narrative path M.Night took us on.

What if for all our self percieved intelligence there are just things we can't grasp? What if Global Warming/Cooling and the Ozone are beyond our full understanding? Likewise we created a boogeyman out of nature in The Happening cause it was our perceptions that said, nature was the dominant constant. Parks. Fields.

As a species our great minds said the solar system revolved around the planet Earth. That the Earth was flat. That you could sail from Spain and end up in India without hitting land. There aren't any measurable units smaller than an atom. We could go on and on.

"...in the end we may never know", to use your Elliot statement, what M.Night is truly trying to convey. Eco-friendly or Eco-indifferent. Maybe its not even entirely an eco message at all. Maybe its something else entirely.
That is part of what I like about this and Lady in the Water. The viewer can take different messages from it and some viewers may not take away the same things. I don't like vagueness in all my movies but its why I enjoy M.Nights movies as a break from the cut and dry straight forwardness of nearly all other movies.

Some people are just not wired to enjoy this type of storytelling and hence the backlash I think.

I saw this on pay-per-view over the weekend, and I didn't think it was that bad. Sure there was a lot of unintentional (I think) humor, but it was better than The Village.

I took it, as kind of the science equivalent of Signs.

I would say the message of both films is that Religion and Science are both just constructs that humans make up to try to make sense of the unknown.

Also, that coming up with all the answers is for the arm-chair quarterbacks after the fact. What matters during a crisis is surviving the crisis.

But then, you get the odd juxtaposition at the end when our two lovebirds give up surviving and run out to hold hands among the plants, so maybe that surviving bit was optional.

Anyway, not the worst movie I've seen...even last weekend. But, then last weekend I also watched Donnie Darko and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, so maybe it just seemed better in comparison. I'd give it a solid C.

My ranking of M. Night's films (So far, he has proven to be a 2-hit wonder):

Unbreakable - I absolutely loved it for the "deconstruction" of the whole superhero myth.

The Sixth Sense - Over-rated. Worth watching twice just to fit all the pieces together for "the twist" ending that's been seen in virtually any Twilight Zone episode. In my opinion, this one is not worth revisiting again.

Signs - M. Night wanted to drive home to the audience the whole "glass shattering" and "water weakness motif" incase the audience didn't "get it" the first time around with "Unbreakable." Water-phobic aliens invading Earth? For what purpose? I just don't buy it.

The Village - I figured out the "twist ending" within the first 30-seconds of the film, because it looked so obvious that they were some sort of "Amish people" isolated from the rest of modern day society. One of the grave markers with the fake year of "18--" also helped me in this clue too, because people who dressed "Puritanically" like them were actually more prominent during the 1600's. And M. Night, no one wanted to see a lingering view of your reflection of your pock marked image over green glass. A 1st person point of view voice cameo alone would have driven it home, man.

Lady in the Water - I skipped it because of my disdain for "Signs" and "The Village."

The Happening - I skipped it because of my disdain for "Signs" and "The Village."

(Avatar) The Last Airbender: I plan to skip this one, because I am not a fan of the cartoon that the upcoming live-action fiilm is based on, as well as my aforementioned disdain for "Signs" and "The Village."

But, surely you were just terrified while all of those people were fearfully cavorting through the meadows like some deranged version of the Sound of Music while they were fleeing from that scariest of all monsters....the wind.

Or, the scene where our intrepid hero was trying to talk a truce to a potted plant?

You know, I may just give up and buy this movie because it gets funnier the longer I think about it.

I don't mind the vagueness of the threat, or the fact that its not explained, in fact I usually love films where it's left up to you as to what you make of it, but bad direction, wooden acting and really bad dialouge are what annoys me about The Happening.

That said it's one of the funniest films I've seen all year (unintentionally of course!)